Many current applications of speech recognition technology are designed to process a limited universe of words, rather than an unconstrained general lexical query of unrestricted domains, such as a Google type of search engine. That is, a speech recognition application can usually function with limited resources if the application is constrained within a topical domain, such as weather, medical, finance, etc. The application can also be constrained by the limitation of allowable expressions, through the use of directed dialog, scripted expressions, fixed menu selections, and the like. However, topical domain constraints do not usually have well defined limits, and may lead to ongoing fine-tuning of the speech recognition system in order to provide the user with an expected range of allowable speech.
For portable and ultra-portable communication devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA's), pocket PC's, and the like, speech recognition capabilities are typically constrained by the inherent processing and memory limitations of such a device. While plug-in memory cards can be used to enhance the functionality of a portable communication device, the memory cards are often limited to single-purpose operating system applications, and generally do not have the capacity to accommodate unconstrained speech recognition systems utilizing large lexicons and grammar tools.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a portable/ultra-portable communication device having speech recognition capabilities that can be used to access and navigate relatively large datasets stored in an onboard memory card or other type of data source. In addition, it is desirable to provide a lexical query process that is intuitive and convenient for searching a domain-related data source. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.